


Worldview (Through A Keyhole)

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Being Erica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica wakes up.  (Post-'Being Doctor Tom', pre-'Battle Royale'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worldview (Through A Keyhole)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a tattered rose (atr)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atr/gifts).



> Thanks to my lovely betas, [akamarykate](http://akamarykate.livejournal.com) and [naturelf](http://naturelf.livejournal.com), who helped me immensely.

Erica opens her eyes.

She stares up at the shadows on the ceiling until they make sense, until she recognises them as familiar: the shadows of her bedroom, on her ceiling. And the man sleeping next to her, breathing deep and even, warm weight dipping the mattress--that's Ethan. Of course it is.

Of **course** it is. But when she turns her head and sees him--Ethan, boyfriend of barely a week, best friend of a decade--he's not who she expects at all.

She swallows down the sudden thickness in her throat and stares at him until he makes sense, too. Then, carefully, she slips out from under the covers, pulls her robe from its heap at the foot of the bed, and goes to the door.

Her hand stays motionless on the knob for a minute, warming the metal.

Doctor Tom's reading lamp casts a warm yellow halo around his desk. Other than the moonlight glow from his window, it's the only light in the room; he sits at the edge of it, leaning back in his chair, one hand resting on the worn red cover of the book closed neatly in front of him.

"Erica," he says, not quite smiling, and gestures to the chair across from him. "Please."

She closes the door behind her and goes to the chair, her bare feet crossing from chilly hardwood to soft, fuzzy carpet. She doesn't sit. "When I was getting dressed this morning," she begins, "I spent twenty minutes hunting through my closet for an outfit I don't have. When I got to work, I went to the wrong department. At lunch, I scrolled through the contacts in my phone three times before I realised--I don't even know the person I wanted to call. And when I woke up just now--" She cuts herself off, pressing her lips together tightly to try to hold in her rising dismay. Her hand finds the top of the chair; she squeezes it, her fingers digging into the firm leather. "When I woke up just now, I didn't know who was sleeping next to me. I didn't know **Ethan**."

Doctor Tom flattens his hand on his book and says quietly, "_Tell me not, in mournful numbers,/'Life is but an empty dream!'/For the soul is dead that slumbers,/And things are not what they seem._ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow."

Not for the first time, Erica marvels at his calm assurance: the way he seems not only to know whatever's happening with her, but also understand it, thoroughly and effortlessly. It's familiar and almost, **almost** comforting. "They're not just dreams, are they."

Now he smiles, small and wry. "No."

* * *

"Erica. Ericaaaaa. Erica!"

Erica groaned and burrowed deeper under her covers. "Go 'way, Leo, 'm sleeping."

"No, wake up. C'mon." He poked her. In response, she flailed out with a fistful of stuffed platypus, only for him to catch it and pull it out of her sleepy grasp. "You brat. I'm trying to say goodbye, here."

"Goodbye?" That cut through her irritation. Opening her eyes, she found Leo sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing his coat and scarf, eyes sparkling with excitement. "Leo, what--what's going on? What are you doing?"

"Shh." He glanced over his shoulder, checking to make sure her bedroom door was still closed. "I really want to do this without waking up Mom and Dad. I want to be on a bus heading west before they even realise I'm gone."

"A **bus**\--" Erica pushed herself up, shaking the bedhead mess of her hair off her face, trying to get her brain to wake up and figure out what was happening. "Leo, are you--running away?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not running away. I'm twenty-one years old, Erica, you don't have to make me sound like a kid."

"Then what are you doing?"

His expression turned serious. "Not...this. Not anymore." Standing, he began to pace her bedroom, the same restless energy she could hear in his voice showing in his movements. "I'm sick of having the same argument with them all the time. I'm sick of fighting, I'm sick of school, I'm sick of fighting **about** school--Dad's barely talked to me since that fight we had at the farm, you know?"

She knew. Hanukkah had been eight nights of strained pleasantries around the dinner table and until the candles were lit, after which Leo retreated to his bedroom to avoid Dad's stony silence. Still, it was hardly the first fight they'd ever had, and things always got better eventually--until the next disagreement came along. And disagreements seemed to be coming along between Leo and their parents more and more frequently lately. "So you're just...going?"

He nodded, beginning to smile again. "A couple of my friends from school--the first time I did school--have jobs out in Whistler. They said they could probably hook me up, at least for the season."

"Hook you up with what?"

"Hotel stuff, resort stuff--running around after tourists, mostly." He shrugged. "Whatever's going, I'll take it."

"That's what you want to do? Run around after tourists or--or whatever?"

"Would you quit sounding like them? That's exactly what I want to get away from!" Subsiding, Leo cast another glance at the door, then returned to perch next to Erica on the bed. Meeting her incomprehension with steady earnestness, he said, "Whatever I end up doing, it'll be different from anything I could be doing here, and that's all I want. I want things to change. I want to feel like I'm doing something new, something for **me** instead of for Barb and Gary. I know you get that, Erica. I know you do."

"Leo..." But she did get it. The Strange family was full of expectations--loving and well-intentioned ones, but no less stressful for all that. And Leo wasn't Sam, with her mathlete awards and effortlessly glowing report cards; he wasn't Erica, either, who loved everything about academia and higher learning that chafed him raw. And if he couldn't find a place for himself here, a place to **be** himself here, at home... "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I've ever been of anything I've ever done." He grinned, then held up one hand in a playful warning gesture. "Don't think about that too much."

He left a note with her for their parents. ("Tell them you found it beside your alarm clock when you woke up. Plausible deniability, sis: always your best option.")

She didn't sleep the rest of the night.

* * *

Erica wraps her robe around herself and sinks into the chair, trying to find the right words to express just how unsettling her last week has been. "These dreams...they started right after everything happened with Leo, and with--" She glances at Doctor Tom, unsure; when he gives a rueful, self-deprecating nod, she continues, "And with you. At first, I thought they were normal, you know, just my mind making sense of it all. Normal dreams. But they were so **detailed**, and they felt so real, and now--"

"And now you're spending more and more of your waking hours torn between what you know is real and what you think should be real," he finishes for her, without question. "Your dreams are encroaching on your life."

"Yes." It seems like such a small word, to be packed with all the worry and frustration that have been building inside her for a week.

Doctor Tom nods--almost clinically--and leans forward, clasping his hands together on his desktop. "The first thing to understand, Erica," he says patiently, as if he were a normal therapist, as if everything about the entire situation were eminently rational, "is that these are not dreams. They're memories."

* * *

Leo surprised her after work one night, slipping in the door just as Lulu and Gord, the bouncer, were pushing the last stragglers out of it. When Erica turned from the table she'd been clearing and found him standing behind her, she nearly dropped a full tray of dirty glasses in her rush to throw her arms around him. "LEO! Oh my God, what are you doing here?"

He hugged her tightly; she was surprised by how much he'd filled out over the last year and a half. "I thought I'd be a gentleman and take my sister home from her disreputable place of employment," he said, his voice warm and smiling. "Since I was in the neighbourhood."

Breaking the hug, Erica whapped him on the shoulder. "Since when are you 'in the neighbourhood'? The last email you sent was from Tokyo!"

He shrugged, grinning, completely unabashed. "This is why it's fun to surprise you, Erica: you get all indignant and violent. It's adorable."

It had been a good night, which meant Lulu was in a good mood: it only took a little bit of wheedling for Erica to convince her to let her go without having to help clean up. ("It's cool; Gord'll help out, won't you, Gordie? 'Course, if you wanted to give me your brother's number, I'd be cool with that, too.")

As they rode the streetcar back to Erica's neighbourhood, she peppered him with questions: what had he been doing with himself ("Sightseeing, mostly. And figuring out how not to completely embarrass myself in conversational Japanese."); who else knew he was home ("You're it; I'm gonna go give Mom and Dad heart attacks tomorrow. Which reminds me, is there any chance I could crash on your couch tonight?"); how long he was planning to stay.

When she asked that, he went quiet for a moment, then said, "Well, that kind of depends."

"On what?"

He took a deep breath. "On where I can find a job that'll leave me enough spare time to get my architecture degree." Seeing the look on her face, he added quickly, "I'm not going back to school. There's this diploma programme I can take, it's an equivalent accreditation to a Bachelor's, only it takes less time and I won't have to sit in a lecture hall all day and--"

"It sounds great." Her ready approval made him furrow his brow, hope fighting with an obvious, wary expectation that another shoe might be about to drop. But Erica had learned her lesson the night he left: questions and explanations could come later. The important thing was that he'd found a direction, something that made his eyes light up, something that had made him **come home** when she knew how much he'd enjoyed travelling and being out on his own. How much he'd thrived once he'd finally been able to live for nobody but himself. "I can't wait to hear about it."

The streetcar deposited them a block and a half from her building. By the time they got inside, it was past three o'clock; while Erica scrubbed off the circus makeup she wore for work and got ready for bed, Leo flipped on the TV and settled on the couch. "I'm gonna be up for a while," he said, raising his voice so she could hear him over the running water. "It's only something like five in the afternoon for me right now."

"No problem." Patting her face dry, she wandered out of the bathroom. "That's what late-night TV's for, right? Just try to keep the volume down, and--" She stopped, her attention caught by what was on the screen. "Hey, I know that guy."

Leo glanced at the picture as it went from fullscreen to a minimized box next to the local news anchor's head. "Really? How?"

She shook her head. "Not personally. He was in Lulu's a couple times last week. Heavy drinker. The last time he was in, he picked a fight with some jerky frat boy and got thrown out." Squinting at the screen, she added, "I think it's the same guy. He looks really different there."

"Huh." Leo turned down the volume as the news report went to commercial. "He jumped off some building downtown yesterday, apparently."

"Oh, that's awful. Tasha said he was a really good tipper." At Leo's look, Erica gave a little gesture of indifference. "You know what I mean. So, what time do you want to go to Mom's tomorrow?"

* * *

"Memories." She stares at him blankly, her tired mind fixating on his certainty, examining it for clues, until she realises. "Leo's alive. In the dreams, he's alive, years after he should've--" She blinks. "They're memories of my life after I saved Leo?"

Doctor Tom leans back again, his chair creaking as he settles himself comfortably. "You lived that life. For just a few hours, maybe, but you experienced it. And now, your mind is working overtime to remember it."

She frowns. "But I **didn't** experience some of the things--most of the things I've dreamt. Not directly."

"You were inside the head of the person who did. Which is not how this therapy is supposed to work, as you now know, but--" He raises his hand dismissively. "--there it is." She gives him a look, part unhappy, part exasperated; he returns it levelly, the barest touch of humour around his eyes. "Tennyson wrote, _All experience is an arch wherethro'/Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades/For ever and for ever when I move._" He pauses. "The margins of that other life aren't fading for you, Erica. Why do you think that is?"

* * *

They'd been planning for the last month to get together for coffee. Usually, it was Erica who'd had to cancel at the last minute--her promotion to Managing Director of Fiction had left her with even less time for a personal life than she'd had when she was clawing her way up the promotional ladder through literal reams of gruntwork--but today, it was Annie who called, breathlessly apologetic, to ask for yet another raincheck.

"I know this is, like, the fourth time we've had to reschedule, but the clinic's been slammed all day--this flu season is just insane--and I've still got actual patients left to see, and honestly, I don't see any way I can be out of here in less than an hour and a half--"

"It's okay, Annie, really." Erica paused at a bench outside the coffee shop and checked her watch. "There are some contracts on my desk that need taking care of by tomorrow, so I would've had to cut things short, anyway."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely. None of the embarrassing stories I have about Leo can't wait 'til another time."

After they hung up, Erica pondered her options. She did have contracts to go over, and she'd been counting on a caffeine hit to carry her through what promised to be another late night with her red pen welded to her hand--but did she want a thermos-sized cup of her usual from the office machine, or was she in the mood to try something new?

When Annie had suggested Goblins, she hadn't mentioned that their open-mic night was really more of an open-mic late afternoon. As Erica joined the lineup at the counter, a lean blond boy was onstage--an employee, she realised, noticing the apron he wore under his guitar--soulfully singing something about alienation.

Well, as soulfully as someone who couldn't be much older than twenty could manage. As he wrapped up his song and basked in applause, Erica thought he came across more _Idol_ reject than Elvis, and hoped he'd forgo another number in favour of getting back to serving drinks and shortening the line.

By the time she finally left, overpriced latte in hand, the alienated blond was crooning his way into a third selection, the lineup had stretched all the way to the door, and Erica had resolved that, when she and Annie picked up that raincheck, **she** was going to choose the coffee shop.

* * *

"Am I stuck with them?" Erica asks, unsure if she wants him to say yes more than no. "The memory--dream--things?"

Doctor Tom shrugs, utterly casual, as if he's not watching her as closely as she knows he is. "They'll fade, eventually. It's only been a week, Erica. A week that, for many reasons, has been very stressful for you." His hand goes back to his book, fingertips running absently along the spine; Erica wonders if it's actually a volume of Longfellow. She's always wanted to get a closer look at the library packed into this office. "You caught a glimpse of the life you've wished for ever since Leo died. A part of you is trying to hold onto that life, but you're not supposed to have those memories. They belong to an Erica Strange you cannot be."

"Then I'll just...forget?" She thinks of everything she's seen of the wonderful, happy, caring man Leo became, and shakes her head. "I don't want that, either. Doctor Tom, I want to remember who he would've been."

"Well, you can't." His response is abrupt, but his eyes are kind, and after a moment, he stands and walks around his desk, focused entirely on her as he approaches. "Every person's existence is made up of a googolplex of possibilities. Living life is a process of closing doors on those possibilities, one or twelve or two billion at a time, until finally, all the doors are closed." Perching himself on the edge of his desk, right in front of her, he says, "There's nothing wrong with a closed door, Erica. Especially if it's supposed to be closed."

She knows he's right. She'd prevented the fire in the past and been returned to a present-day life she barely recognised, a life that might have been wonderful or might have been terrible but definitely wasn't **hers**. And the memories she'd dreamt had been driving her crazy all week, luring her into a world that hadn't really been and couldn't ever be--a world in which, after all, she was going to lose Leo too soon anyway. Again.

She knows he's right. Leo's death is a closed door in her life, and it would be wrong for her to want to lose herself in whatever might have been on the other side. And yet...

...and yet. "How do you know which doors are supposed to be closed?"

He smiles. "They're the ones that are."

* * *

"And now, to introduce the author of _A Crowded Reality_\--the little Canadian novel that, as of today, has been on the _New York Times_' bestseller list for an amazing 117 weeks--Word On The Street is proud to present the Managing Director of Fiction at Toronto's own River Rock Publishing: Erica Strange."

Erica shook hands and accepted air-kisses from the emcee, took the podium, and gazed at the crowd packed inside the tent as she waited out their applause. Mom and Dad and Sam were out there somewhere; Nate was just outside, waiting for her with flowers and--she hoped--the small velvet box she'd found the other day while gathering up clothes to be taken to the dry cleaner. Representatives from every major publishing house in Canada--and more than a few international ones--were about to hang on her every word, and why shouldn't they? They were the words of the woman who'd taken a completely unknown author's very first book and slingshot it onto the _New York Times_' bestseller list for a nearly record-breaking run.

In that moment, Erica was exactly where she'd always known she wanted to be. It was incredible, and it was exhilarating, and it was wrong. All wrong.

Because Leo wasn't there.

* * *

Erica opens her eyes.

It's a clear morning: sunlight beams behind the blinds, shows brightly at their edges. She hears Ethan shuffling sleepily out in the kitchen, and wonders how long he's been up.

As she sits up, her gaze lands on the photo hanging on the wall opposite the bed: her and Leo when they were teenagers, taken the day he left for university the first time. It's not the best picture of her--she has early-nineties hair and is grinning in a way that makes her look kind of stoned--but it's her favourite picture of him: he looks relaxed and happy, with a small, mischievous quirk in his smile.

She thinks about the other Leo, about how he'd grown up and settled down, and about the other Erica, whose shoes she'd stumbled around in like a child wearing her mother's heels.

She can't quite reconcile those people with the ones in the picture on her wall. The potential is there, of course, frozen in time, captured for posterity like everything else; but Erica's spent half her life looking at that picture and seeing **herself and her brother**, and compared to them, those other people are...unrecognisable.

A muffled clunk and muttered curse from the kitchen draw her attention: Ethan's having his usual chest-thumping battle for dominance with her coffee maker. Smiling--really smiling, for the first time in what feels like ages--Erica throws off her blankets and stands, stretching. Coffee seems like a good idea.

Before leaving, she pauses in front of the photo. "Love you, Leo," she murmurs.

Then she opens the door and goes on with her life.

 

End.


End file.
